Is Zuckerberg considering a career in politics? Atheists tend to do poorly in the USA, but if he can normalise religion then he’ll fit right in to Trump’s vision of Washington.
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I find it supreme irony, and probably a sign of a higher power, that black Africans are more pure human than any white person (or any non-black African person).
The groups of humans who migrated out of Africa came in contact with and interbred with Neanderthals. Thus they all carry the taint of our “special” cousins. Africans never encountered them, and thus lack any of their genes.
That’s a good point that many religious rituals, even if one isn’t terribly religious, are part of various shared cultures. I know atheists who still enjoy a good rendition of Holy Night, not because they believe Christ was born that day, but because they enjoy the song and it was part of their past. Heck the modern Christmas we celebrate is a hodge podge of Christianity and other Pagan and secular traditions meshed together.
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If I had a nickle… well, maybe more like a quarter (inflation) for every time I’ve seen the hypocrisy of myself or a Jewish friend of mine having had someone say that Jewish holidays should only be celebrated by religious Jews, but that “Christmas is basically secular now”… I’d be as well off as the stereotype insists I should be.
You’re kidding, right? The US Christian Right are virulently antisemitic.
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Maybe this ties in with that recent New Yorker story alluding that serious Silicon Valley money is being invested in an attempt to escape the simulation…
My adjustments to that one paragraph were for the purposes of showing you the fundamentalist religious viewpoint and how similar it is to your statement. I probably won’t make any headway here, but I’ll make an attempt.
Let’s start with the basic tenet: Spiritualism: the belief that there is more to this world than its physical properties, typically with the concept of the soul, the ka, the aura, whatever. Because these things lack tangible properties they are unprovable and likewise unfalsafiable which places them outside the realm of science, they are ‘super’ natural. You may not believe in the concept of the spirit, but there are many who do, and unlike say ‘climate change’ there is no concrete evidence that can disprove an unfalsifiable concept, that’s the point. For many the spirit is their secondary hope at immortality: the primary hope is children. Anything which threatens their spiritual wellbeing is thus a threat to their continuing existence. Problems can arise from this belief, but any concept of human ‘purity’ has potential issues, including the concept that mental strength cannot coincide with beliefs not rooted in the physical world; see ‘as others have noted’ the state atheism of the Soviet Union and other Bloc countries.
Second note: Dogma: A doctrine or corpus of doctrines that dictate morality based on religious tenets. This is specifically the problematic part of spiritual belief, but again because of the unfalsifiable nature of the spirit, this isn’t a point you can argue on the basis of fact. You can however attack dogma’s with logic, particularly when it is self contradictory. A far as indoctrination of children goes, I’m against it, but some amount is unavoidable. The beliefs of parents mold, or counter-mold their children. Saying there is or isn’t a God, is already swaying them one way or the other. See the next item for the relative benefits of either
Third: Secular vs Religious: For those who believe in the spirit and dogmas relating to the spiritual wellbeing of people, things which contradict those dogmas are thus dangerous to that wellbeing. As much as you think religion is dangerous to the mind, fundamentalist think that your secular-ness is dangerous to the soul. I think temptations are necessary for strength of either the spirit or mind, because if you are never challenged, your beliefs stagnate and your character suffers for it. I’m about choices, and what they make people, if you have no choices, there isn’t really a point to anything.
Fourth: Atheism vs Theism: For many fundamentalists the despair in the world is caused by people turning from faith to other things. If everyone was their faith, belonging to their one belief, there would be no problems. Any belief that teaches people that others cannot be tolerated, including militant atheism, can be used as a tool for those who desire power.
You can condemn religion, think of it was worthless and ignorant, whatever, but if you want people to actually change, you have to address them with some manner of respect and understanding. If you have no hope of changing them, then you can’t save them from themselves or anything else.
Accepting rebirth and karma doesn’t make one a theist, so atheism’s orthogonal. I acknowledged there were folks in your position, but I said it was a bit of a mess, and I stand by that. The core of the issue is whether one can claim to take refuge in the Dharma, while rejecting very central tenets of the Dharma. It’s pretty hard to look at the Tripitaka and consider rebirth/karma anything but central, and the meaning of enlightenment itself in its full significance hinges on those. There’s a debate within the community (not just for Zennists) and the full scope’s complex. There are some who think one can separate the Zen from the Buddhism, there are some hermeneutical approaches to make claims about praxis as you do, Zen’s a bit of a funny case since being an iconoclast is part of the tradition, and there’s the five styles approach one can take to separate them out. So yes, it’s more complicated than I presented it, but at the same time it’s still a pretty complicated and rather tangled thing to take refuge in teachings you reject.
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Supporting the existence of the Jewish state, particularly for the purpose of the apocalypse, doesn’t preclude anti-semitism. Awkward alliances form between parties seeking completely different ends with a common means.
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I wsould argue that supporting the existence of Israel for the purpose of the apocalypse is antisemitic, when you take into account what the Jewish peoples role is in it (convert or spend eternity in hell).
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Those I can measure reproducibly. Yes, empiricism could be wrong. The whole world could be an illusion. But that doesn’t put myth on the same footing as empiricism. Right or wrong, empiricism has real-world consequences, can make prediction, be tested, and be used to influence the environment.
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I first got started singing the Messiah as a young adult with a group of middle-aged Jewish men from work. We would go to the Do-It-Yourself night every year and stretch out along one row in the tenor section so that I was as close as possible to the altos and the ones who were more baritone/bass were at the other far end. They swore that there were certain lines they wouldn’t sing, because they were all actively religious, not just culturally, but it wasn’t true: they sang every word. It’s not really about direct belief in the religion…it’s about beauty and community and annual ritual.
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Did you misread “preclude” for “produce”? I think you’re both saying the same thing.
I think you might be using the term ‘ontology’ in an unconventional way. Empiricism is an epistemology not an ontology. Ontology involves claims about being as such. Metaphysical naturalism would be an ontology. Ontologies are built on a priori propositions. You can justify an ontology a posteriori, but you can’t base it on a posteriori accounts.
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Yes.
My dyslexia has been causing me problems recently, I usually manage it but stress can cause me to misread things.
I hate using dyslexia as an excuse but that is just because I can usually manage and feel that I should do so all the time.
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No worries! Glad I could help.
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That could well be true. I haven’t really studied Zen, but I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt.
While it addresses Theravada and Vajrayana more directly, those interested in how Buddhism was re-purposed in the west may be interested in David Chapman’s writings. This essay would be a good place to start.
The Dawkins & Hitchens MRA-pseudoskeptic streak that attempted to co-opt the “Atheist community” is certainly a newer take.
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I agree. And I also agree that the people pushing against that from the religious side are dangerous. I’d like to think there are safeguards in place against it. But we both know that a danger exists, especially now, of completely erasing that line. But honestly, the people in the greatest danger are first and foremost, in this environment, other religious people who don’t have the same faith as the people in power (who are, largely, protestant Christians - with others).
That danger will always exists as long as power works in the way it works. And as I noted above, it’s not just religiously motivated.
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I’d say that they are very pro-Israel and very antisemitic, too. They support Israel so they can make their “Christian” countries religiously homogeneous. They don’t support Israel because they want Jewish people to have a safe space, but because they don’t want to live near them. It’s a very strange kind of zionism.
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CoE - aka the Cake or Death? guys.
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Okay, just in case, so you’ll be prepared: if he should announce next year that he is the messiah - he is not. Just a very naughty boy.
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